great day to be outside, even better on the water. the flow rate is close to normal but the river is still a bit highj. I did some wading in carefully selected areas but only enough to improve casting angle. Water temp 64 degrees, visibilty in river, nil. visibility in one creek I lokked at improved since yesterday, could see some bass on beds.

I primarily fished shoreline related eddies and slack areas. I did check one creekmouth and checked a couple riffles out in the faster current. For the most part I used a weighted keeper hook/power pulse worm and a jig/pig because that was worked the best. A singlespin got some fish, got some on swimbaits and some on flukes. Many of the smallmouth and rockbass caught were relating to waterwillow areas, some of them quite shallow. Other fish were relating to forage, schools of minnows in the eddies/slack areas. There were asome others out on the seams. The creekmouth popped a few but the riffle areas in faster water didn't produce at all.

I started at the creekmouth and got a couple smallmouth on a singlespin. The gar turned on but were more interested in the swimbaits. I landed a couple, ldr on 6 or 7 of them.

After that it was pretty much shoreline related eddies and slack areas. If there were green shooys of waterwillow there were smallmouth and rockbass especially if there was shade or foam piles. For the most part it was the weighted keeper/power pulse worm with a few on a single spin.

I fished the jig/pig out on the seams about 75% of the casts there, the rest was with the weighted keeper. That brought the most divergent fishing with four different species to hand.

I tossed flukes and swimbaits to areas that had minnows breaking suface until the fish demonstrated a distinct preference for the fluke.

I tried buzzbaits, spooks, j-9 floating raps and rattlebaits, absolutely no interest whatsoever. Not for long as the fish were showing a decided preference for jigs on the bottom.

Seven species, smallmouth, walleye, channel cats, rockbass, sunfish, drum and gar, 57 fish in total. The most interesting occurence was a northern banded watersnake attacking my fluke. It stayed attached for a bit but thankfully let go. I wasn't sure how I was going to handle detaching him from the fluke, never had to try before. It was interesting to see, the strike was extremely fast.

That's hilarious Norm. Several years ago while fishing the Kank down near the I -55 bridge, saw a fella fishin' roaches hook a Queen snake. Scared the ba-jebas out of him as he mis- took it for a cotton mouth. Had a hard time convincing him that they aren't native to this area and the snake he hooked, while "scary" looking, was relatively harmless. Those Northern brown banded water snakes can be pretty cantankerous themselves. i've had them hiss at me if i get too close when they aren't in the water. Again, non-venamous.

How's Rock Creek lookin'?? Might try and get down soon.


Bob P.

bass are on the beds in rock creek. yesterday was wadeable with improved clarity. last night's rain prolly changed some of that.